Explained with live physics you can play with — real equations solved in your browser, no black boxes, no pre-baked animations. Start at the whole machine and keep going down until you hit the mathematics.
Every explanation opens with a drawing that moves. The piston follows its real slider-crank, the wing tilts and the flow bends with it, the rotary drags its whole engine round with the propeller. Nothing here is a looped video.
Below are five examples out of 28. See the full Labs index →
Suck, squeeze, bang, blow — two turns of the crank for one power stroke.
Four cylinders, firing 1-3-4-2, so something is always pushing.
Nine parts of air go round the core for every one that goes through it.
Tilt the wing and the flow bends with it: the steeper the angle, the more lift.
On a Fokker Dr.I the whole engine went round with the propeller.
See all lab animations 28 simulators across the Engine Lab, the Aero Lab and Vehicle Dynamics.Switch on engineer mode and every demo on the site shows its working: the chart it is solving, the sliders that drive it, and a readout of the real numbers. Here are the five that belong to the animations above — drag anything.
Power and precession
the spinning engine
yaw right → nose pitches DOWN
yaw left → nose pitches UP
gyroscopic precession, 90° ahead of the input
Four real courses, written for people who love machines: read the lessons, play the embedded simulators, and check yourself when you feel like it. Progress is saved as you go.
Every part of a Formula 1 car, one system at a time.
Start course →11 lessonsFrom one explosion to a living engine — the full piston story.
Start course →11 lessonsOne physics, two goals: wings that lift planes and press cars down.
Start course →10 lessonsThrowing air backwards, very hard — the complete turbomachine.
Start course →Era-defining machines in order, each with its one defining trick explained live — the moments a clever idea became the way everyone does it.
Seven cars, 1959–2014: mid-engine, ground effect, turbos, active suspension, hybrid power.
Nine aircraft from the Wright Flyer to the A350 — each one the moment flight changed.
Ten engines, 1876–2012: the four strokes, the deleted spark, the blower, the burble — and the motor that ends it.
Ten aircraft, 1939–1944: the dive-bomber, the fighters, the fortress, the transport, the jet, and the bomber that ended it.
Five red lights, then go. Most people are slower than they think.
One corner of a pit stop against the clock. Nut off, wheel off, wheel on, nut on.
The ten WW2 aircraft in a top-down shooter, on their real numbers.
Every button, dial and paddle where you want it.
8 chapters
The chain: fuel → wheelsThe engineClutch & gearboxThe differentialBrakesTyres & gripSuspension & steeringAerodynamics of a car4 chapters
Why planes flyThe enginesWings & control surfacesDrag, speed & the envelope4 courses · 45 lessons
The F1 Car — 13 lessonsCar Engines — 11 lessonsAerodynamics — 11 lessonsJet Engines — 10 lessons4 timelines · 36 machines
Formula 1 — 7 carsAviation — 9 aircraftEngines — 10 enginesWW2 aircraft — 10 aircraftEvery page on this site answers one question: how does the machine actually work? Not with arrows and hand-waving, but with the real physics — burning fuel pushing a piston, air bent downwards over a wing, four patches of rubber gripping the road. Cars and planes are the two big stories; engines of every kind run through both. The demos are honest simulators: each one solves its governing equations live in your browser, so dragging a slider changes the physics, not the frame of a canned animation.
The writing aims at a curious A-level physicist — plain language first, then a “Go deeper” section on every topic for when the simple version stops being enough. When you want more than we cover, two free resources we rate highly are NASA’s Beginner’s Guide to Aeronautics for flight theory and MIT OpenCourseWare for the thermodynamics underneath every engine. Otherwise, start anywhere — the eight-chapter car story, the four chapters of flight, or straight into a simulator in the Labs.